Community supported agriculture plus nutrition education improves skills, self-efficacy, and eating behaviors among low-income caregivers but not their children: a randomized controlled trial

Urban Farm DB summary

The Farm Fresh Foods for Healthy Kids (F3HK) randomized controlled trial, conducted in New York, North Carolina, Vermont, and Washington from 2016 to 2018, assigned 305 caregiver-child dyads to a cost-offset (half-price) community supported agriculture (CSA) share plus tailored nutrition education, or to a delayed-intervention control group. After one growing season, no significant net effects were observed on children's dietary intake, BMI, or physical activity. Caregivers, however, showed statistically significant net improvements in cooking attitudes, skills, and self-efficacy, fruit and vegetable intake and skin carotenoid levels, and household food security. Improvements in attitudes and self-efficacy persisted at one-year follow-up, but improvements in caregiver diet and household food security did not. The number of weeks a household picked up its CSA share — not the number of education sessions attended — was associated with improvements in caregiver fruit and vegetable intake and household food security. The study concludes that cost-offset CSA plus nutrition education improved caregiver and household outcomes within one season but had no effect on children, and some improvements were not maintained after the CSA season ended.